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The Art of Politics

Winslow Street Endowment Fires Whistle Blower

By Judy Osborne

 

Three months ago in my Rape On Winslow Street article I reported that the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) was using fifteen-thousand dollars of funds borrowed from the Winslow Street Endowment Fund for its own operational purposes, in secret, in violation of the Fund’s purpose, in violation of promises made to all donors to the Fund over its years of existence, and without benefit of a note, a specified interest rate on the full amount borrowed, or a repayment schedule.

 Although I didn’t identify her then, Kerri Reeder was my principal source of information for that article. Kerri was one of the trustees of the Winslow Street Fund. Winslow Street chairperson Abby Saypen countered my article in the next issue of TG Forum with a Loan Was Proper response. In it, Abby lambasted Kerri for "accusing the trustees and chair (of Winslow Street) of rape and pillage" and for "accusations and inferences, outright lies and character assassination." Abby never claimed any of the information in my article was wrong, though.

 Kerri isn’t a trustee any more. The IFGE Board of Directors met late in January and voted to dismiss Kerri for blowing the whistle on the improper loan. Nine days after that decision, news of which had leaked to the community and reached Kerri’s ears in the meantime, Abby Saypen’s letter finally arrived informing Kerri that she had been removed as a trustee.

 If you don’t know Kerri, I wish you did. Kerri is a beautiful person. Open and caring, she’s always ready with a joke and a smile and loving support for those who need it. All her professional life she’s been an innovator and businessperson, with a number of successful start-ups in her past. She was one of the early organizers of the Winslow Street Fund, has worked extensively to build and sustain IFGE, and has been providing valuable support to the Outreach Institute and Fantasia Fair for years. Kerri knows her way around both our community and the protocols of business.

 The reason Abby gave for Kerri’s removal was that she had "violated one of the most important rules of the Winslow Street Trustees. The decisions of the trustees are absolutely confidential and issues that cannot be settled among the trustees should be brought to the IFGE Board." Abby even suggested that Kerri apologize to both boards, at the same time assuring Kerri that such an apology could not restore her as a trustee.

 Kerri didn’t make a mistake requiring an apology. Nobody with Kerri’s business sophistication would take such an issue to the community without first exhausting every way to fix the moral wrong within established councils, and Kerri didn’t. The loan from the Winslow Street Fund to IFGE was voted during the Southern Comfort convention in Atlanta. Kerri wasn’t able to attend. When she was told of the loan, she voiced her objections and requested, at minimum, that formal loan papers be drawn up and signed to establish the interest rate and repayment schedule. She could do little more, having already been outvoted.

 IFGE has a problem with money, and the loan grew out of the latest manifestation of that problem. IFGE’s three products, Transgender Tapestry, the bookstore, and the annual convention, each should return at least as much to the coffers as they cost. Despite the potential profitability of all three, IFGE has been operating on the edge of financial disaster throughout its history. IFGE memberships amount to an almost invisibly tiny fraction of the members of transgender organizations nationwide. Having failed so far at the grass-roots level, IFGE has turned to a succession of wealthy donors to make up its operating deficit year after year. A number of these big donors, in turn, have been granted lofty positions within the organization, but most have disappeared after circumstances in which their will has been thwarted. IFGE didn’t have any big donors available to bail it out of its latest crisis, and the organization turned to the Winslow Street Endowment Fund instead.

 We’re talking real money. Although IFGE never has commissioned an independent audit of its financial operations to share with the community, various IFGE-generated figures lead to a conclusion that the organization spends between three and four hundred thousand dollars per year. Debt is estimated at eighty thousand dollars, some of which may be offset by receivables (most appear uncollectible). The operating shortfall can amount to as much as one hundred thousand dollars a year, although the deficit figure surely is quite variable year by year. One cannot escape the conclusion that the eighty-thousand-dollar Winslow Street Endowment Fund would not last long in such an environment.

 When the Winslow Street Fund was formed, the account was placed within IFGE because the Foundation seemed a convenient non-profit organization in which to park the endowment funds. The tragedy is that, contrary to the community’s understanding, Winslow Street never was set up as a separate trust fund. Winslow Street funds appear as an asset on IFGE’s books.

 Abby Saypen, Laura Caldwell and Michelle Miles are the remaining Winslow Street trustees, Abby the chairperson. Abby and Laura are members of IFGE’s Executive Committee as well, and both have assumed major responsibilities for seeing to it that IFGE’s budget is balanced. Until new trustees are appointed (Abby will bring a list of nominees to the spring meeting), their two votes constitute a majority of the Winslow Street trustees. Abby and Laura’s IFGE budget-balancing responsibilities conflict with their history of pledges to donors that they forever will keep the Winslow Street endowment as a separate entity which cannot be used in any way for IFGE operations. While they did not do anything technically illegal by lending Winslow Street money to IFGE, they clearly have broken their pledges made over the years to donors to the Fund, at least one of whom named Winslow Street as her memorial before she died.

 Upon hearing of the pending loan, Kerri feared that the transfer of funds marked the beginning of a slippery slope down which all the Winslow Street endowment money soon would disappear. She lobbied the other Winslow Street trustees to arrange proper documentation of the loan and minimize the damage to the Fund’s integrity. She called and e-mailed Abby Saypen and Laura Caldwell, asking, and then demanding, that a note setting down the interest rate and repayment schedule be signed before any funds were transferred. The note was promised but not delivered.

 Before she brought the issue to the community in November, Kerri had talked twice with Abby, at least once with Laura, had e-mailed IFGE Chair Linda Buten asking for documentation, had discussed the folly of the loan with then-IFGE Executive Director Allison Laing, and had e-mailed a protest to the entire IFGE board asking them to intervene. Rather than hearing back arguments to justify the loan and its lack of documentation, Kerri’s efforts were met with silence, vague promises, and delay. Finally she learned through other sources that the funds had been transferred from the Winslow Street account to the IFGE operating account without any notification to her, and without documentation.

 Only after all her efforts failed did Kerri bring the issue to the attention of the general community. Her most immediate response was from new IFGE Executive Director Nancy Nangeroni, copied to many of us on an e-mail circuit then raging, who told her, "you cannot hope to continue as a WSF trustee after this." Dallas Denny, upon finding that statement in her e-mail, reacted in the way many of us felt. She told Nancy at the time:

  "Pardon me sticking my nose in on what isn’t my business, but I must make a comment. I do so only in my capacities as a member of the community and a bystander in the recent spate of e-mails. I’m surprised by your above remarks. I consider that Kerri did a service to both IFGE and the community-- and for that matter, to the Winslow Street Fund-- by making this issue public.

"In the past, IFGE’s response to two board members who pressed for financial accountability was to slander them and pressure them from the Board. I have little doubt that had they been listened to, IFGE’s finances would be in better shape and the current situation would never have arisen. I should hope IFGE learned something from that experience and will not repeat it in this case.

"I admire loyalty, integrity and courage, and I consider that Kerri has shown a great deal of all three in her recent actions. These are qualities that should make her highly desirable as a Winslow Street Fund trustee-- not the reverse."

Kerri herself said it well at about the same time:

"I am proud of being a Trustee of WSF and have given many years (over 10) of service to our community, specifically to IFGE. I have no ladders to climb, no axes to grind, no personal or professional vendettas, no position to protect so why would I stick my neck out to preserve WSF. Because it was and is a Trust which helped our community grow and I will not see it sullied by indifference or negligence."

Kerri realized from the beginning of this sad episode that she was placing her status as a Winslow Street trustee in jeopardy, not because her position was less than moral but because she was causing a light to shine on an improper decision which was intended to remain in darkness. It was her hope and intention that structural changes would be made to the Winslow Street Fund to preserve its ability to finance new and promising ideas now and on into the future.

She hasn’t achieved her hope and intention just yet, but in an open letter to the IFGE board and members of the community, sent just after her dismissal, Kerri wrote:

"Be assured that I and other community members will be watching and working to re-establish Winslow Street Fund to the position of Trust it deserves."

Comments, including critical ones, are most welcome. Please e-mail your thoughts to me at heyjude@eskimo.com.



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